What's Next?

Existing Market: 
Through the activities and assignments throughout this semester, we have identified a market for the product or service that we have developed. It is easy to identify what is in the immediate future for my business service idea, and that is to hit the ground running and advise customers on the details, processes, and alternatives in their student loan situations that personalized to themselves. Beyond that, I want to think about what is next after hopeful successful implementation of this venture idea. How can I make this service even better, target even more customers, and get the most out of this business for myself as well as the people that I aim to help and assist. What comes to mind first and foremost is to be equipped with the most up-to-date, the most useful information possible to deliver to my customers. I need to make the world of student loans my life and know the insides and outs of the processes so I am confident in my ability to help my customers. As far as what else is next for this venture idea, I asked a few potential customers what they think I should do in order to improve and advance this service. First, I asked the three people I interviewed their thoughts on the ideas for what I had next for my business idea. The overwhelming response from all three interviewees was that they think I need to implement something that involves technology and the convenience that comes with effective technology use. After all, I am targeting college students, and people my age often look for what is most convenient. These customers want something that will be easy for them to digest in short, easy to understand methods. After hearing this feedback, it helps me develop more of a plan for my business idea. I think it is clear that before I worry about implementing any sort of technology into my business, I need to establish a customer base and establish success with them. I think there is a value to face-to-face interaction and conversation when it comes to this need, so while my customer base is just being developed and is still small, this is the way to get the business started. After exponential growth and success, that is when technology can be implemented, in a way that will allow my customers to receive my service without needing to meet up with me and have that face-to-face interaction. This will enable my service to reach a much larger customer base at a much more frequent pace.
New Market:
Throughout this course, we have been tasked with focusing on one particular customer market and being as specific as possible in that identification. For my service, my customer market is first or second year college students at the University of Florida who are needing to or who are already taking out student loans in order to pay for school. A market that would be radically different from that is people in high school, or just recently out of high school who aren't even going to college or not planning on going to college at all. I believe my venture idea may be able to reach these people because the reason for not attending college for many of them may be because they did not want to get in the thousands of dollars of debt that it would require in order to go to college. So perhaps, with my service I can show them that is fiscally possible, and the benefits outweigh the negatives for attending a college or university. I spoke with two people who I know that do not go to college and are my age, so not too far removed from high school. The consensus was that one of the main reasons they did not go to college was because of the financial impact, and they had the opportunity to make money with a job rather than owe money by going to college. They both agreed that by receiving more information prior to making their decision, it may have affected what they decided to do. This process of identifying a new market really surprised me. I never thought of the possibility that my service idea could positively affect people that are not even in college or thinking about college. I think there may be a real opportunity with this market as well, which just expanded the potential of my business idea that much more.